AZ - the beginning

Hi guys, so this is a super special Cat on the Loose for me, solo.

No guests today, because it's the second part of my story about my husband AZ that died in 2018.

I decided to tell the story because, first of all,

it is happy but it's very sad.

Obviously, the ending is super sad.

He ended up dying from alcoholism in 2018.

And I hope that if there is someone out there who has been going through this or has been going through this or needs help or just wants to talk about it,

will feel good when they hear my story.

And also,

because this is a story that as it develops, you guys are going to go like, oh my God, no way.

I can't believe this stuff happens in real life.

and I didn't either until it happened to me so if you did not listen to the first episode how I met my husband from the first season I recommend that you guys go there listen to the first episode and then come back to this one

and every week I'll publish another little piece of it and I'm also starting to publish the book about it called Yellow Roses in June on Instagram so if you want to follow the story you can follow it here and you can follow yellow Roses in June on Instagram.

And by the time you're done, you're going to be, no way, I can't believe this is fiction.

This cannot, I think, this is fiction.

This cannot possibly be real life, but it is.

And I said that the first time I was talking about the story, and I say now, many, many, many times, real life is so much crazier than fiction.

And I was one of those people that thought that these things cannot happen in real life, and they certainly cannot happen in the United States.

But hey, they can.

So, I told you guys on the first episode of How I Met My Husband,

how I met him.

So, now

the next 15 years, we were together for 15 years.

And the great part about it is that he was an incredibly intelligent and very, very successful guy.

He owned a huge business.

It was a company that investigates insurance fraud.

And And when I met him, we're talking 20 years ago.

It was already a pretty big company on the East Coast.

And back then, as the years went by, he was expanding to having offices all over the country.

So his business was booming.

And

everything was great because he really treated me like a princess.

He loved taking care of me.

We traveled a lot.

He was very interested in traveling, which which is my passion for you guys that know me.

So we would go to Europe twice a year.

He had never been to Brazil, and he was extremely interested in Brazilian culture.

And that made me so happy.

So we went to Brazil a gazillion times.

We traveled all over the United States.

Whenever he had business meetings or whenever he was opening new offices, he would take me with him.

So I actually got to see the entire country, literally, all the 50 states traveling with him for vacation or for business or for both.

So that part was really, really, really amazing.

The first six years that we were together, we weren't even married, we just dated.

I wasn't really in a hurry to get married on paper because he had just been through a divorce.

And I don't think he was either in the beginning.

I think we were really just enjoying getting to know each other and spending so much time together.

And

he really gave me all the attention in the world a girl could possibly ask for.

So, from the outside world, people would look at me and say, Oh my god, this girl has like this charmed, perfect, fabulous life.

But of course, it wasn't.

If such thing exists, it wasn't mine.

So, here are the cracks that obviously now looking back, I see, but back then I just ignored.

He was extremely jealous of my work.

So, slowly but surely, he would convince me to work less and less and less.

I stopped doing photo shoots.

I stopped

doing more and more and more and more.

Whatever I would try to do, back then, I had a business that did a fashion and image consulting.

I did styling for a lot of girls in LA.

And when I would go to LA and

work, he would complain.

And I remember certain phrases like one time because we were bi-coastal, he had a place in Florida and we would travel all over the country and we had a place in LA

because most of my work was in LA and he hated California by the way.

But I remember him saying to me, I don't know why you're going to bother doing this job.

I make more in an hour than you make in a month.

So he was constantly putting me down.

But of course I was in love and everything else was so nice that back then I kind of just really ignored it.

But as the years progressed, even the first six years of us just dating before we got married, I worked less and less and less.

And he would tell me, well, I make so much more money.

You should spend a lot of time with me and we'll just travel and travel the world.

And that's the lifestyle we should have.

So I kind of agreed reluctantly because I wanted to make him happy.

And I would work less and less because every time, again, he would make a big deal out of it and then the biggest problem even at the very beginning

his first love

even before me was alcohol

he was a highly functioning alcoholic when I met him meaning he was running his business although he had a vice president he had a cfo

he had a great managers but he was in control of everything he would wake up super early in the morning, go through all of his emails, make all the phone calls, go to the office whenever he needed to.

And he would actually travel and go close deals.

He took care of all the marketing.

He would show up in conventions.

So when he was home, he would have a bunch of drinks.

But in my mind, and I want you guys to remember this was 20 years ago.

So I was super young in my early 20s.

In my mind, I'm thinking, well, he's making so much money.

He's running a multi-million dollar company.

If he's having a few drinks at home, it's okay.

I didn't really realize that it was such a fast escalating problem.

And I honestly did not understand how serious alcoholism destroys a person's life and how seriously it escalates.

Most people, I don't think that they have an understanding unless you actually go through it, unless you actually have a family member who's an alcoholic or

a friend, you see it from the outside, and basically you think, well, why doesn't the person stop drinking?

And I think I was the same.

Back then, I was thinking, well, it's just a few drinks and he'll be fine.

And

so I really believed in my heart that he wasn't going to get worse and drink more and more and more.

I thought it was always going to be like that.

Sorry, I interrupted for a second because Phoenix was going nuts.

And

so, for six years, we're dating, and life is great on the outside.

It's a mixed bag on the inside.

But he was showing me a lifestyle and a life and the traveling that I had never had the opportunity to do before.

And he was very protective, very old-fashioned, and I love that about him.

People asked me time and time again to describe my life with him.

And I guess the best way I can explain it is that it was incredible because I felt like a princess every day all the luxury money could buy breakfast in bed gifts amazing homes five-star trips and at the same time

I literally felt like a Barbie doll that you play with and you put away in a box that you don't want her to go out there in the world and and do her own thing

I started literally feeling that I'm living in a box protected from everything all the time.

More and more and more, he would try to shield me from the real world.

And more and more and more, he was completely against me doing any kind of work whatsoever.

And yeah, I know it sounds like an amazing life to many women out there, but I always loved doing something.

I always loved being creative.

I always loved being

a model, being an artist, being a writer.

And deep down inside, I felt like I was doing all these things to please him, but they were really hurting me.

And of course, the darkest, most painful part that nobody sees is how much being so close to an alcoholic hurts.

I guess, unless you live with one or you love one, you would never ever imagine the painful daily experience it is to see someone you love drinking every single day, and then the changes in mood,

and slowly you realize that that they're destroying their life and your life in the process.

And it takes forever to realize that there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.

I know you guys are probably thinking, oh, it can't be that bad.

Put him on rehab, take away the bottles, da-da-da-da.

Well, you guys can imagine that in 15 years, I tried pretty much every

effing thing you can think of in this world.

But again, it takes years in the process for anyone, at least for me, to get to the point that I realize, oh my God, this guy is not going to change for me, for doctors, for rehab, for anything in the world.

A person that drinks their first love is the booze, and now I'm a firm believer.

They will only change.

They will only stop.

If they want to do it for themselves.

I don't think any alcoholic is going to stop to drink because they they love someone.

Yeah, so sometimes I was angry, sometimes I was mad, sometimes I was sad.

I was every emotion you can possibly think of on the planet.

And if they want to drink, they will not stop because of anyone in the world.

So, as much as he was the sweetest, most loving, generous, intelligent, caring man that I had ever met at that point,

I started realizing that he would change his personality within seconds for no reason.

And he would verbally abuse me,

not all the time, but many times when he drank.

He was a guy that would call me, Hi, little doll, hi, little princess, hi, sweetheart, and five minutes later, and a bunch of vodka's down for whatever reason.

Sometimes it could be something as simple as not liking the food I cooked or the restaurant we picked, he would simply go ballistic on me.

So now we are talking about two super heavy-duty issues:

alcoholism and verbal abuse.

And many times before, when I try to talk about the story to friends or family members or something, the first thing most people ask me is, then why did you stay?

Because we're talking about six years of just dating this guy.

I wasn't even married to him.

Yeah, we lived together, we traveled together, we were together all the time, but we were not legally married.

And most people just say, well, then why didn't you leave?

If he's drinking, if he's he's rude, if he's going crazy on you when he drinks.

And the answer is,

and I think most people that have been through it will agree with me.

When it happens to you and you are in the situation, you don't realize how serious it is.

I remember the first time he went crazy and started calling me names, kicking and screaming.

I went to my bedroom and I let him calm down because my personality is never, ever, ever to

scream back and fight.

And then hours later, when he was sobered up and he was calmer, he justified it.

He said, oh, you said something that pissed me off, blah, blah, blah.

And I agreed with him.

That's the way I justified.

I was like, oh my god, I should be a better person.

I should make the food nicer.

Or I shouldn't piss him off if he comes home so tired from work.

I would come up with excuses why he had that behavior, and I would blame me.

And so, the first time that it happens, and the person tells you they're not gonna do it again,

you believe them.

And then, the second time that it happens, the person tells you not gonna do it again, you say, Yeah, no, I need to do better too, and it's my fault, and you believe it.

And you're so invested in the relationship, and there are so many great moments that when you're in it, you don't realize, wait a minute, this is not good.

It's never ever acceptable to be verbally abused.

And it's not okay to be called names, and it's never going to get better.

But it literally took me 15 years with him between dating and being married to him

to realize that.

And that's how crazy it is to be a victim of abuse.

For the longest, longest time you blame yourself.

And I have talked to other women who were verbally abused I have talked to women who were physically abused and most of them tell me the same thing in the beginning you blame yourself and you love that person so much you think oh he would never do it on purpose he would never hurt me on purpose he's always so nice to me

and I will give you guys very graphic examples of how he verbally abused me I started doing a diary because I was very lonely and I was very scared at the time.

I didn't want to tell anyone about what was going on.

First, because he was the president of a huge company.

I didn't want it to leak that he was doing that.

I didn't want to do anything that would harm his business and

his career.

And I didn't want people criticizing me.

And I didn't want my parents who were alive at the time.

Thinking that I was making the wrong decision.

So I would just keep everything to myself.

So I started actually writing a journal.

Every Every time that it happened, or I was really sad, or I was really alone.

I started writing.

Maybe I wanted to remember all the name calling and all those times.

I guess I was building up strength through that diary to see if I could finally leave him or if I should leave him.

But anyways, it became a diary.

Now what I say is I will try to bring experts that can talk about it because I know you guys are going to have a lot of questions.

And I'm in no way, shape, or form an expert when it comes to abuse or alcoholism.

But I tell you guys something:

an alcoholic, like I said before, I don't think they will stop drinking because they love the wife or they love the husband or they love the kids.

They need to decide they want to stop drinking for themselves.

And verbal abuse, unfortunately, I do not think it's something that stops.

So, after everything that I went through, to this day, I say that if anybody mistreats me or if anybody raises their voice or

calls me a name, it's 1 million billion percent unacceptable.

Anyways, I'll come back with another chunk.

I'll tell you the story about how I decided to marry him after six years of dating and what happens the next eight years that we were together and what happened after his death that is even crazier.

This was Kat on the Lose.

Send your questions,

DM me on Instagram, Katzamuro,

my WhatsApp 305-332-0-338.

Email katzamura gmail.com.

And I'll talk to you guys soon.

I'm going to have a super fun guest on Friday.

Love you.